BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- The Crimson Tide wasn’t the only team from Alabama to bring home a championship from New Orleans this week.

The pit crew from Birmingham’s Jim ’N Nick’s Bar-B-Q, led by executive chef Drew Robinson, also won a far-less-intense but every-bit-as-competitive barbecue-vs.-boudin showdown against chef Tory McPhail and his team from Commander’s Palace restaurant, which is owned by the Crescent City’s legendary Brennan family.

The culinary battle of New Orleans was staged Sunday afternoon as a precursor to Monday night’s “Rematch of the Century” between the Tide and the LSU Tigers, which Alabama won 21-zip.

The Jim ’N Nick’s team and the gang from Commander’s Palace laid out their best tailgate spreads, and SI.com sportswriter Andy Staples, who came up with the idea, picked the winner.

“Because of the game, the idea was to have representative food from both Alabama and Louisiana, in kind of a competitive way,” Robinson says.

McPhail and the Commander’s Palace crew served four types of boudin, a sausage that is a staple in Cajun country.

Robinson and the Jim ’N Nick’s team, meanwhile, barbecued an Alabama-raised whole hog and served it along with ribs and chicken, macaroni and cheese and collard greens on the side, and lemon and chocolate pies for dessert.

Here's a video from the competition:

It was all in good fun, Robinson says, but it was even more fun to win.

“It was a friendly competition, but being from Alabama, we wanted to see Alabama bring the trophy home,” he says. “And the fact that they felt like our food was the best was definitely an honor because those guys do such a great job with what they do at Commander’s.”

'Obviously, Andy was hiding his Gumpness'

The comments from fans on the Commander’s Palace Facebook page, however, are pretty amusing.

In the spirit of sportsmanship, the Jim ’N Nick’s crew later served a barbecue dinner to the Commander’s staff, who were slammed all weekend serving fans in town for the national championship.

“It was a good time for us because everybody — the Brennans, Tory and all the guys at Commander’s — were really nice and hospitable to us,” Robinson says. “And they don’t really see much barbecue, at least the way we think of it, very often.”